


And, In the End

by Polomonkey



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexuality, Coffee Shops, Coming of Age, Disabled Character, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-01
Updated: 2015-10-01
Packaged: 2018-04-24 05:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4907284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polomonkey/pseuds/Polomonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mithian doesn't believe in fairytale endings anymore. Elena might have something to say about that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And, In the End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArgentSleeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArgentSleeper/gifts).



> For ArgentSleeper, who is loveliness itself. 
> 
> This is technically the same Elena and Mithian mentioned in my fic [I Feel Love](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4263657), but you don't need to read that for this to make sense.
> 
> Fills my trope bingo squares 'coffee shop', 'disabled character', and 'fairytale'.

When Mithian was little, her father read her fairytales. She remembered him sitting by her bed, his big bearlike form folded up on her ladybird stool, patiently reading in his quiet, steady voice. It was her favourite time of day, snuggled up warm in her bed, inhaling her dad’s familiar peppermint and tobacco smell, his voice a gentle hum in her ears.

There were rarely any mothers in the fairytales. Perhaps that was why her father chose them; to show her that other little girls grew up without mothers too, and that they found happy endings. Her father always did his best to compensate for her mum’s absence. He answered all of Mithian’s questions about her, made sure the house was full of pictures of her, never refused to hear her name spoken. In return Mithian loved her father twice as hard, and pretended she didn’t hear him crying over the washing up most nights.

There were usually handsome princes involved in the stories, sweeping young women off their feet, but Mithian wasn’t interested in them. She liked the witches best, liked the goblins and the trolls and the gnarled old warlocks. She didn’t like the evil stepmothers though, mainly because she feared one day her father might bring one home with him.

He never did, though. It was always just the two of them.

 

***

 

Mithian figured out she wanted to kiss girls as well as boys aged eleven. She didn’t have a name for it until she became friends with Vivian aged fifteen, who proudly announced her bisexuality, and pumped her fist in the air when Mithian timidly volunteered her own.

Vivian was one year older than Mithian, and she seemed impossibly glamourous. In fact she seemed to be as thrilling and different as the word bisexual itself sounded on Mithian’s tongue; conjuring up images as it did of rock stars in New York or punks in London, or some other exciting and impossibly far away people. But Viv was bi and, while beautiful and wild, was as undeniably Bristolian as Mithian herself; right down to the soft West Country burr that they all worked so hard to conceal, until they fell in love with their own gentle accents later in life. Viv being bi made the whole thing real, made Mithian feel like perhaps this was something she could be too. 

Viv had also had sex with a girl, which added another layer to her obvious cool.

“I met her online,” she said nonchalantly, sucking on a cigarette in the gym toilets while Mithian watched the door. “She’s seventeen, she goes to Our Lady’s.”

Our Lady’s was a private school and all the girls wore neat pleated skirts and soft green blazers. Mithian was suitably impressed.

“What was it like?” she asked.

“Really good,” Viv said. “She made me come with just her fingers.”

At fifteen, Mithian had an even vaguer conception of how sex worked between two women than she did between a man and woman. But she nodded wisely and Viv seemed satisfied.

“She’s gonna take me to that gay club in town, she knows the bouncer,” Viv said, stubbing her fag out on the sink. “You can come if you like.”

Mithian momentarily froze in horror at the idea. She didn’t feel ready for that, ready for announcing herself to the world in such a public way.

“My dad probably wouldn’t let me,” she said at last.

“You don’t tell him where you’re going, duh,” Viv said, but her tone was gentle, as if she knew what was going through Mithian’s mind and she forgave her for it.

“Maybe next time,” she said as they left the toilet, and Mithian nodded gratefully.

The girl from Our Ladys didn’t last long but Viv soon found a replacement. At least six more boys and girls had come and gone before Mithian had her first sexual encounter aged seventeen, with a boy from St Andrew’s at a party.

“How was he?” Viv whispered in assembly, her warm breath tickling Mithian’s ear.

“Good,” Mithian muttered back, and tried to look as engrossed in the headmaster’s speech as possible to stave off further questioning.

The truth is, she didn’t know if he’d been good or not. She hadn’t minded the kissing too much, but he’d been hot and heavy when he’d laid down on top of her, and the fingers pushing up inside her felt thick and clumsy.

She’d pretended to fall asleep eventually, when she was too tired to make the moaning noises she felt she should; noises that seemed to satisfy him but sounded more to her like the keens of an animal in pain. She’d gotten up and left quietly the next morning, whilst most partygoers were still passed out asleep on the floor. She was cold in her little dress on the bus home, and vaguely worried the other passengers would smell the sex on her, because it seemed to fill her own nostrils almost unbearably. But mostly she tried to think about nothing, just stared out of the window and watched the houses pass by, grey and small.

Viv seemed unruffled when she finally admitted the truth weeks later.

“Try it with a girl next time,” she said. “You’ll like it with a girl.”

 

***

 

Perhaps inevitably, Mithian had sex with Viv.

It was their last night together before Vivian left for university, and Mithian had been tearful at the prospect of facing another year of school without her friend. Viv’s cheer up solution had been to get her drunk, which worked surprisingly well. They’d stayed out till the bars closed, then gone down by the river bank and lain on the grass, tins of cheap cider in their hands. And all the melancholy had rushed back to Mithian, and she’d reached out to grasp Viv’s hand, rubbed her fingers over the stubby, bitten down nails - the only part of her friend that wasn’t completely perfect.

“I’ll miss you so much,” she choked out.

“I know,” Viv said, and it didn’t sound cocky like it normally would, her voice was quiet and intense.

“I’ll miss you so much,” Mithian repeated, not knowing anything better to say. “I don’t know what I’m going to do-”

Viv cut her off with a kiss, so unexpected and yet so completely expected that all of Mithian’s shock dissolved in an instant. She kissed back, desperately, struck by how right it felt; perhaps this was what she’d been missing all along. There was nothing wrong with her after all, she’d just been waiting for the proper person, and Viv was that person, and now everything would be alright…

And then Viv slipped her hand under Mithian’s skirt and it wasn’t alright anymore, not at all.

It wasn’t awful. Viv’s fingers were slighter and more deft than the party boy’s from six months before. But it wasn’t nice either. And even though Viv was as light and petite as Mithian herself, her weight still felt crushing when she climbed on top of her.

It didn’t take Viv long to figure it out. She rolled back onto her side and there was a long silence.

“I thought-” Viv started, but there was no more, and Mithian was torn between begging Viv to finish that sentence, and hoping she never would.

“Sorry,” Mithian said into the darkness, and there was no answer, just the smallest of sighs.

 

***

 

Viv left for uni three days later, and neither of them mentioned it again. She did press a kiss to Mithian’s lips as she said goodbye; but when Mithian tried to deepen it, Viv gently pushed her away.

“Probably best we just stay friends, Mithy Lithy,” she said kindly, and Mithian was stung by the use of the old nickname most of all.

She was angry at first, but later she was just sad. This wasn’t how the fairy tales went. It was like Viv was a Princess, and Mithian was a girl who turned into a frog when she kissed her. She got everything wrong. She was all wrong inside, too.

Mithian swore off happy endings for life, there and then. It was time to get practical. No more daydreaming. She’d have more sex and she’d learn to like it and she wouldn’t waste her time expecting more from anyone.

She kept this resolution for exactly eleven months, and then Elena wheeled herself into Mithian’s café one bright August morning, and all of that went to hell.


End file.
